pleasant to us, though I cannot claim to have enjoyed those two hours
spent in turning round and round before it while steaming and drying.
But the broiled beef, the toast, and those generous cups of tea to which
we devoted the hour between ten and eleven were quite satisfactory. So,
too, was the pleasant chat till midnight warned us to roll up in
overcoats and close our eyes to the fire, to the dark, sombre grove, and
far stars crowding the now cloudless heavens.
The sun rose and shone on us while we breakfasted. Through all the
visible sky not a cloud could be seen, and, thanks to yesterday’s rain,
the air was of crystal purity. Into it the granite summits above us
projected forms of sunlit gray.
Up the glacier valley above camp we slowly tramped through a forest of
noble Pinus Flexilis, the trunks of bright sienna contrasting richly
with deep bronze foliage.
Minor flutings of a medial moraine offered gentle grade and agreeable
footing for a mile and more, after which, by degrees, the woods gave way
to a wide, open amphitheatre surrounded with cliffs.
I can never enter one of these great, hollow mountain chambers without a
pause. There is a grandeur and spaciousness which expand and fit the
mind for yet larger sensations when you shall stand on the height above.
Velvet of alpine sward edging an icy brooklet, by whose margin we sat
down, reached to the right and left far enough to spread a narrow
foreground, over which we saw a chain of peaks swelling from either side
toward our amphitheatre’s head, where, springing splendidly over them
all, stood the sharp form of Whitney.
Precipices white with light and snow-fields of incandescent brilliance
grouped themselves along walls and slopes. All around us, in wild, huge
heaps, lay wrecks of glacier and avalanche.
We started again, passing the last tree, and began to climb painfully up
loose _débris_ and lodged blocks of the north wall. From here to the
very foot of that granite pyramid which crowns the mountain, we found
neither difficulty nor danger, only a long, tedious climb over footing
which, from time to time, gave way provokingly.
By this time mist floated around the brow of Mount Whitney, forming a
gray helmet, from which, now and then, the wind blew out long, waving
plumes. After a brief rest we began to scale the southeast ridge,
climbing from rock to rock, and making our way up steep fields of soft
snow. Precipices, sharp and severe, fell away to east and west of us,
but the rough pile above still afforded a way. We had to use extreme
caution, for many blocks hung ready to fall at a touch, and the snow,
where we were forced to work up it, often gave way, threatening to hurl
us down into cavernous hollows.
When within a hundred feet of the top I suddenly fell through, but,
supporting myself by my arms, looked down into a grotto of rock and ice,
and out through a sort of window, over the western bluffs, and down
thousands of feet to the far-away valley of the Kern.
I carefully and slowly worked my body out, and crept on hands and knees
up over steep and treacherous ice-crests, where a slide would have swept
me over a brink of the southern precipice.
We kept to the granite as much as possible, Pinson taking one train of
blocks and I another. Above us but thirty feet rose a crest, beyond
which we saw nothing. I dared not think it the summit till we stood
there and Mount Whitney was under our feet.
Close beside us a small mound of rock was piled upon the peak, and
solidly built into it an Indian arrow-shaft, pointing due west.
I climbed out to the southwest brink, and, looking down, could see that
fatal precipice which had prevented me seven years before. I strained my
eyes beyond, but already dense, impenetrable clouds had closed us in.
On the whole, this climb was far less dangerous than I had reason to
hope. Only at the very crest, where ice and rock are thrown together
insecurely, did we encounter any very trying work. The utter
unreliableness of that honeycomb and cavernous cliff was rather
uncomfortable, and might, at any moment, give the deathfall to one who
had not coolness and muscular power at instant command.
I hung my barometer from the mound of our Indian predecessor, nor did I
grudge his hunter pride the honor of first finding that one pathway to
the summit of the United States, fifteen thousand feet above two oceans.
While we lunched I engraved Pinson’s and my name upon a half dollar, and
placed it in a hollow of the crest. Clouds still hung motionless over
us, but in half an hour a west wind drew across, drifting the heavy
vapors along with it. Light poured in, reddening the clouds, which soon
rolled away, opening a grand view of the western Sierra ridge, and of
the whole system of the Kern.
Only here and there could blue sky be seen, but, fortunately, the sun
streamed through one of these windows in the storm, lighting up
splendidly the snowy rank from Kaweah to Mount Brewer.
There they rose as of old, firm and solid; even the great snow-fields,
though somewhat shrunken, lay as they had seven years before. I saw the
peaks and passes and amphitheatres dear old Cotter and I had climbed:
even that Mount Brewer pass where we looked back over the pathway of our
dangers, and up with regretful hearts to the very rock on which I sat.
Deep below flowed the Kern, its hundred, snow-fed branches gleaming out
amid rock and ice, or traced far away in the great glacier trough by
dark lines of pine. There, only twelve miles northwest, stretched that
ragged divide where Cotter and I came down the precipice with our rope.
Beyond, into the vague blue of King’s cañon, sloped the ice and rock of
Mount Brewer wall.
Sombre storm-clouds and their even gloomier shadows darkened the
northern sea of peaks. Only a few slant bars of sudden light flashed in
upon purple granite and fields of ice. The rocky tower of Mount Tyndall,
thrust up through rolling billows, caught for a moment the full light,
and then sank into darkness and mist.
When all else was buried in cloud we watched the great west range. Weird
and strange, it seemed shaded by some dark eclipse. Here and there
through its gaps and passes serpent-like streams of mist floated in and
crept slowly down the cañons of the hither slope, then all along the
crest, torn and rushing spray of clouds whirled about the peaks, and in
a moment a vast gray wave reared high, and broke, overwhelming all.
Just for a moment every trace of vapor cleared away from the east,
unveiling for the first time spurs and gorges and plains. I crept to a
brink and looked down into the Whitney Cañon, which was crowded with
light. Great, scarred and ice-hewn precipices reached down four thousand
feet, curving together like a ship, and holding in their granite bed a
thread of brook, the small sapphire gems of alpine lake, bronze dots of
pine, and here and there a fine enamelling of snow.
Beyond and below lay Owen’s Valley, walled in by the barren Inyo chain,
and afar, under a pale, sad sky, lengthened leagues and leagues of
lifeless desert.
The storm had even swept across Kern Cañon, and dashed high against the
peaks north and south of us. A few sharp needles and spikes struggled
above it for a moment, but it rolled over them and rushed in torrents
down the desert slope, burying everything in a dark, swift cloud.
We hastened to pack up our barometer and descend. A little way down the
ice crust gave way under Pinson, but he saved himself, and we hurried
on, reaching safely the cliff-base, leaving all dangerous ground above
us.
So dense was the cloud we could not see a hundred feet, but tramped
gayly down over rocks and sand, feeling quite assured of our direction,
until suddenly we came upon the brink of a precipice and strained our
eyes off into the mist. I threw a stone over and listened in vain for
the sound of its fall. Pinson and I both thought we had deviated too far
to the north, and were on the brink of Whitney Cañon, so we turned in
the opposite direction, thinking to cross the ridge, entering our old
amphitheatre, but in a few moments we again found ourselves upon the
verge. This time a stone we threw over answered with a faint, dull crash
from five hundred feet below. We were evidently upon a narrow blade. I
remembered no such place, and sat down to recall carefully every detail
of topography. At last I concluded that we had either strayed down upon
the Kern side, or were on one of the cliffs overhanging the head of our
true amphitheatre.
Feeling the necessity of keeping cool, I determined to ascend to the
foot of the snow and search for our tracks. So we slowly climbed there
again and took a new start.
By this time the wind howled fiercely, bearing a chill from
snow-crystals and sleet. We hurried on before it, and, after one or two
vain attempts, succeeded in finding our old trail down the amphitheatre
slope, descending very rapidly to its floor.
From here, an exhausting tramp of five hours through the pine forest to
our camp, and on down the rough, wearying slopes of the lower cañon,
brought us to the plain where José and the horses awaited us.
From Lone Pine that evening, and from the open carriage in which I rode
northward to Independence, I constantly looked back and up into the
storm, hoping to catch one more glimpse of Mount Whitney; but all the
range lay submerged in dark, rolling cloud, from which now and then a
sullen mutter of thunder reverberated.
For years our chief, Professor Whitney, has made brave campaigns into
the unknown realm of Nature. Against low prejudice and dull indifference
he has led the survey of California onward to success. There stand for
him two monuments--one a great report made by his own hand; another, the
loftiest peak in the Union, begun for him in the planet’s youth and
sculptured of enduring granite by the slow hand of Time.
1873
The preceding pages were written immediately after my return from Mount
Whitney, and without a shadow of suspicion that among the sea of peaks
half seen, half storm-hidden, I could have missed the true summit.
Professor Whitney alone possessed sufficiently studied data to apply the
annual corrections for barometric oscillation in the high Sierra, and to
his office I at once forwarded my observations noted upon the Mount
Whitney summit, together with the record of simultaneous readings at
Lone Pine, the station upon which I relied for a base. As I was about
mailing the chapter to our printer, from my camp in the Rocky Mountains,
I received from Professor Pettee, who had kindly made a computation, the
puzzling despatch that Mount Whitney only reached fourteen thousand six
hundred and ten feet in altitude. Realizing at once that this must be an
error, I attributed it to some great abnormal oscillation of pressure
due to storm, and decided not to publish the measurement.
Then for a moment a sense of doubt came over me lest I had been
mistaken; but on carefully studying the map it was reassuring to
establish beyond doubt the identity of the peak designated on the map of
the Geological Survey of California as Mount Whitney with the one I had
climbed. The reader will perhaps appreciate, then, my surprise and
disappointment when, travelling in the overland car to California in
September, 1873, I read and re-read a communication by Mr. W. A.
Goodyear, former Assistant of the Geological Survey, made to the
California Academy of Sciences, in which he points out with great
clearness that I had missed the real peak.
To explain most simply why Mr. Goodyear saw the true Mount Whitney when
he reached the summit of my peak of 1871, it is only necessary to state
that he had a clear day, and the evident fact stared him in the face. If
the reader kindly refers to the preceding part of the chapter,
descriptive of my 1871 climb, he will note that my visit was,
unfortunately, during a great storm, through whose billows of cloud and
eddying mists the landscape disclosed itself in fragmentary glimpses: to
repeat the expression of my notebook, “as through windows in the storm.”
My little granite island was incessantly beaten by breakers of vague,
impenetrable cloud, and never once did the true Mount Whitney unveil its
crest to my eager eyes. Only one glimpse, and I should have bent my
steps northward, restless till the peak was climbed. But, then, that
would have left nothing for Goodyear, whose paper shows such evident
relish in my mistake that I accept my ’71 ill-luck as providential. One
has in this dark world so few chances of conferring innocent, pure
delight.
It must always remain a bond between Goodyear and myself that in the
only paper he has written on the high Sierras it was his happy thought
to point both pleasantry and argument with that most grotesque and sober
of beasts, the mule; and, while my regard for all mules rises wellnigh
into the realm of sentiment, I cherish no less a feeling than profound
indebtedness toward the particular one who succeeded--with how great
effort only a fellow-climber can know--in getting Mr. Goodyear on the
now nameless peak, whence, like Moses from Pisgah, he beheld the
Promised Land.
My gratitude is not all directed to the mule, either; from that just
channel a stream is directed toward the clear, good judgment of my
friend, who resolutely turned his back on the alluring summit, and
promptly quitted the head of mule navigation to descend and hold me up
in my proper light. Pleasantry aside, and method being largely a matter
of taste, Mr. Goodyear deserves credit for having so clearly pointed out
my mistake--credit which I desire to bear honest tribute to, since his
discovery has already led several of us to climb the true peak, a labor
requiring little effort and rewarded by the most striking view in the
Sierra Nevada.
Of course I lost no time in directing my steps toward Mount Whitney,
animated with a lively delight which was quite unclouded by the fact
that two parties, who had three thousand miles the start of me, were
already _en route_, and certain to reach the goal before me.
Perhaps there is no element in the varied life of an explorer so full of
contemplative pleasure as the frequent and rapid passages he makes
between city life and home: by that I mean his true home, where the
flames of his bivouac fire light up trunks of sheltering pine and make
an island of light in the silent darkness of the primeval forest. The
crushing Juggernaut-car of modern life and the smothering struggle of
civilization are so far off that the wail of suffering comes not, nor
the din and dust of it all; and out of your very memory for a
time--alas! only for a time--fade those two indelible examples of the
shallowness of society, those terrible pictures of sorrow and wrong, and
that perennial artifice which wellnigh always chokes with its weedy
growth the rare, fine flowers of art.
All is forgotten: those murky clouds which in town life dispute the
serenity of one’s spiritual air drift beyond view, and over you broods
only the quiet sky of night, her white stars moving beyond fragrant
pine-tops or lost in the dim tangle of their feathery foliage. Such is
the mountaineer’s evening spent contemplatively before his fire; the
profound sense of Nature’s tranquillity filling his mind with its repose
till the flames give way to embers, and guardian pines spread dusky arms
over his sleep. Not less a contrast greets him when from simple field
life the doors of a city suddenly open, and the huddled complexity of
everything jostles him. Either way, and as often as one makes this
transit between civilization and the wilds, one prizes most the pure,
simple, strengthening joy of nature.
Thus, when, from the heat and pressure of town in September, 1873, I
suddenly plunged into the heart of the Sierra forest, a cool mountain
sky of holy blue and my well-beloved trees, calm and vigorous as ever,
communicated thrills of pleasure well worth my brief separation from
them. Day after day through the green forest I rode on, leaving the
mustang to choose his own gait, scarcely talking to my two campaign
companions, who with the plodding pack-animals followed noiselessly
behind. It was only when we ascended the east wall of the Kern Cañon on
the Hockett Trail, and reached the nebulous plateau where pine and
granite and cloud form the three elements of a severe picture, that I
felt myself filled to the brim with my long draught of nature, and
turned to my followers for society.
I was accompanied by Seaman and Knowles, two settlers of Tule River, who
had been good enough to take a thorough interest in my proposed trip.
One less used than I to the strong originality and remarkable histories
of frontiersmen might have marvelled at the rich chat of these two men;
for myself, however, I long ago learned to expect under the rough garb
and simple manners of Western plainsmen and mountaineers a wealth of
experience, with its resultant harvest of philosophy. Untrammelled by
the schools, these men strike out boldly and arrange the universe to
suit themselves. Not alone is this noticeable in matter of general
interest; in the most special subjects it will not do to assume an
ignorance at all in keeping with the primitive cut of their trousers or
their idiom, which show strong affinities with the flint period. As an
instance, volcanic action has of late years occupied much of my
thoughts, and so dry a subject, one would think, could not have fixed
the interest of many non-professional travellers. Judge of my feelings,
therefore, on the night we reached the Kern Plateau and camped with a
solitary shepherd, to hear without giving direction to it myself, the
conversation turn on volcanoes, and realized, as the group renewed our
fire and hours passed by, that my two companions had been in Iceland,
Hawaii, Java, and Ecuador, and that, as for the sheep herder, he had
rolled stones down nearly every prominent approachable crater on the
planet. I was reminded of a certain vaquero who astounded Professor
Brewer by launching out boldly in the Latin names of Mexican plants.
The Kern Plateau, so green and lovely on my former visit, in 1864, was
now a gray sea of rolling granite ridges, darkened at intervals by
forest, but no longer velveted with meadows and upland grasses. The
indefatigable shepherds have camped everywhere, leaving hardly a spear
of grass behind them.
To the sad annoyance of our hungry horses, we found this true until we
entered the rough, rocky cañon which leads down from the false Mount
Whitney, in whose depths, among glacier erratics and dark pines, we
selected a spot where a vocal brook and patches of carex meadow seemed
to welcome us. During a three days’ painful illness which overtook me
here I felt that I should never lose an opportunity to warn my
fellow-men against watermelon, which, after all, is only an ingenious
contrivance of nature to converge the waves of motion from the midsummer
sun, and, by the well-recognized principles of force conservation,
transmute them into so much potential colic.
Across from wall to wall of our deep glacier cañon the morning sky
stretched pure and blue, but without a trace of that infinite depth, so
dark and vacant, so alluringly profound, when the sun nears its
culmination. We arose early, and all three were marching up the gentle
acclivity of the valley bottom, when, from among the peaks darkly
profiled against the east, bold lances of light shot down through gloom
and shadow, touching with sudden brightness here a clump of feathery
fir, there a heap of glacier blocks, pencilling yellow lines across
meadow-patch or alpine tarn, and working out along the whole rocky
amphitheatre above us those splendid contrasts of gold and blue which
are the delight of mountaineers and the despair of painters.
Knowles, with the keen eye of an accomplished hunter, became conscious,
as we marched along, just how lately a mountain sheep had crossed our
way, and occasionally the whispered sound of light footfalls along the
crags overhead riveted his attention upon some gray mote on the granite,
and with the huntsman’s habitual quiet he would only ejaculate:
“Two-year-old buck,” or “Too thin for venison,” or some similar phrase,
indicating the marvellous acuteness of his senses.
Among the many serious losses man has suffered in passing from a life of
nature to one artificial is to be numbered the fatal blunting of all his
senses.
Step after step the cañon ascended, with great, vacant corridors opening
among the rocky buttresses on either side, till at last there were no
more firs, the alpine meadows became mere patches, and a chilly wind
drew down from among the snow-drifts.
Here savage rock-grandeur and splendid sunlight forever struggle for
mastery of effect. A cloud drifts over us, and the dark headlands of
granite loom up with impending mightiness, and seem to advance toward
each other from opposite ranks; about their feet the wreck of centuries
of avalanche, and above leaden vapors hurrying and whirling. All is
dimness and gloom. Then overhead the clouds are furled away, and there
is light--light joyous, pure, gloom-dispelling, before whose intense,
searching vividness shadows unfold and mystery vanishes.
Through such alternating sensations we wound our way round the
_débris_-cumbered margin of two lakes of deep, transparent,
beryl-colored water, and up to the very head of our amphitheatre,
reaching an elevation of about thirteen thousand feet. We had thus far
encountered very little snow, and absolutely no climbing. All along it
had seemed to us that from the cañon-head we might easily climb to the
dividing summit of the Sierras, and follow it along to Mount Whitney. I
had taken pains to diverge from my unsuccessful route of 1864, which lay
now to the east, and separated from us by a high wall, terminating in
fantastic spires.
Upon mounting the ridge-top we found it impossible to reach the true
summit of the range without first descending into a deep cañon, the
ancient bed of a tributary glacier of the Kern; the ice now replaced by
imposing slopes of granite _débris_, partly masked by snow, and plunging
down into a lake of startling vitriol color.
We toiled cautiously down over insecure wreck of granite, whose huge
blocks threatened constantly to topple us over or to rush out from under
foot and gather into an avalanche. A draught from the icy lake water, a
brief rest on the sunny side of a huge erratic, and we began the slow,
laborious ascent of the summit ridge. Unfortunately, the footing was
bad, being composed chiefly of granite gravel. Of every stone in place
and each snow spot we took advantage, making pauses for breath now and
then, until at last we reached the crest, here a thin ridge, and
hurriedly turned our eyes in the direction of Mount Whitney.
The sharp, dominating blade of granite rising a couple of miles
northwest of us, over a group of spiry pinnacles, was unmistakable. The
same severe, beautiful crest I had struggled for in 1864 rose proudly
into the blue, and, though near, seemed as inaccessible as ever.
In the opposite direction, about three miles away, in clear, uncolored
plainness, stood the peak where, in 1871, I had been led by the map, and
my error perpetuated by the clouds.
In full view of both peaks it seemed strange I could have mistaken one
for the other.
Infallibility in retrospect is one of the easiest conditions imaginable;
yet when the ever-fresh memory of those seething cloud-forms comes back
to me, when I see again the gloom made even wilder and darker by bolts
of sunlight and illumined gauzes of mist, when I realize that the
cloud-compelling peak itself never shone forth, I am free to confess
that I should make the mistake again.
In charging this error upon the map, I do not in any sense intend to
reflect on Mr. C. F. Hoffmann, the accomplished chief topographer of the
Survey, to whose skilful hand we owe the forthcoming map of Central
California. His location of Mount Whitney depended upon two compass
bearings only--his own from Mount Brewer, which proves to have been
unvitiated by local magnetic attraction, and mine from Mount Tyndall,
which evidently is in error.
It is most curious to discover that my bearings made from a station on
the northwest edge of Mount Tyndall, where I placed myself to observe on
the peaks lying in that direction, are, when corrected for variation,
true, while those taken from a block on the south edge of the summit not
sixty feet from the first station are abnormal. This reminds me of the
observations made by Professor Brewer during our hours of rest on the
top of Lassen’s Peak, where he found the summit block a local magnet.